A gift of life: 19-year-old gives friend a kidney

Posted on Wed, Aug. 27, 2008

A gift of life: 19-year-old gives friend a kidney

BY DESONTA HOLDER

The night before Jonas Read became a kidney donor, his mother was almost frantic. Dressed in his hospital gown, he mocked her concern: ``Oh, no, you can't go driving around. What if you get in a car accident? No, you can't do this because you're gonna die. No, you can't do that because you're gonna die. Everything was gonna kill me!''

To calm her, Read, 19, said: ``If I die, give Austin my kidney.''

Just hours away from his surgery last month to donate one of his two healthy kidneys to free his lifelong friend from the clutches of dialysis, this teen with dirty-blond hair, button earrings, chin stud and platinum beard was all too calm about becoming a donor.

The surgery at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center was his moral obligation, he felt, to help Austin Pence, 22, a friend since both were toddlers modeling on South Beach, earning $75 an hour. ''We were so young back then,'' Read says.

He's so young now, as well, to be making such a life-saving decision that he considers ``no big deal.''

But it is a big deal. As with all major surgeries, there are risks -- infection, pneumonia, blood clots, death. There's also the risk of a collapsed lung because of its proximity to the kidney. And although studies have shown living with one kidney does not increase health risks, heavy trauma could lead to the loss of a single kidney -- and dire consequences.

The benefit of donor surgery, however, is the gift of life.

In the decades since kidney transplants first appeared as leading-edge surgery, the procedure has become increasingly common -- more than 16,000 were performed last year. Most transplants involve one family member donating to another, but friend-to-friend or stranger-to-stranger transplants are not uncommon.

''There's about a 10 percent chance to get an identical match'' outside your family, says Dr. Linda Chen, assistant professor of surgery at the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine and director of the live kidney donor program.

''When got tested, my insides felt like it was right,'' Pence says. ``It was really a weird feeling.''

Jonas felt it was right, too.

CHILDHOOD MEMORIES

The boys grew up together, Read in Cooper City and Pence in Davie. Jonas remembers ''playing a lot of games and stuff, running through orange groves and riding around in go-karts,'' while Austin fast-forwards to their love of those ''awesome'' Batman and Hellboy flicks.

Pence ''was like my little boy,'' recalls Jonas' mother, Lynn Read. `` 'Cause, you know, you're like 7 or 8, and a little 5-year-old wants to come and bother you. used to take him. . . . He got a payoff for being nice.''

The boys grew apart when the Reads moved to Lake Worth in 1999, but the families still gathered for Thanksgiving. In 2004, Pence enrolled at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, and in 2007 Read moved to Jacksonville, where he's managing a yogurt shop while attending Florida Community College.

''I don't know how to explain it,'' Read says of their friendship. ``It's just like a connection you get.''

When Read heard in June 2007 that Pence needed a kidney transplant, 'the first thing I said was, `Sign me up.' I mean, what more could you want in life than to better someone else's?''

Pence's kidneys had been failing for more than a year. During his junior year as a criminal justice major at UCF he visited the campus clinic, complaining of a lip infection so painful it kept him awake. After his blood work was examined, he was sent straight to an emergency room.

When Pence was told he needed a transplant, ``I started crying in the hospital. My whole life turned around. . . . I don't know how long I could be on dialysis. . . . The needles are humongous, thick. . . . Ten years? No way I could do that.''

And no way Read would let him do that, if he could help it.

Pence says that he's still amazed at how quickly Read agreed to donate. At 19, ''you really don't think about stuff like this,'' Pence says.

Before Read was tested to see if his kidney was a match, Pence's relatives were tested, but none matched. ''I would have gave him my kidney the first time I saw him at the hospital, but I wasn't a match,'' says his brother Logan Pence, 24.

Pence's mother Dianne remembers her 83-year-old father pleading to donate: ''Gimme the paperwork.'' But he was far above the age limit for donors.

STRONG CONNECTION

When Read was tested, and there was that connection the 19-year-old spoke about, Pence felt it, too.

''When my dad, my uncle and his dad got tested, they didn't feel like it was gonna happen,'' Pence says. But Jonas was a match, signaling the beginning of the end of thrice-weekly dialysis treatments, which left Pence, a broad shouldered former St. Thomas Aquinas football player, with the debilitating side effects of extreme fatigue and insomnia.

Read also had to be subjected to a few unpleasantries as he underwent rigorous donor tests. ''I had to get a catheter with no pain medication,'' he says now, still wincing, ``so they could get sterile urine. I've given blood four or five times, and every time they take six or seven vials. I've had EKGs, X-rays, sonograms.''

Nearly a month after it was performed, the surgery appears to be a success.

The kidney ''pinked right up and even made urine right away,'' says Dr. George Burke, professor of surgery at UM and chief of the division of kidney/pancreas transplants.

When Pence came out of the anesthesia, 'the first thing he said was, `Where's Jonas? Is Jonas in pain?' '' Dianne Pence says. ``I admire both of them . . . the rock star and the preppy.''

Read still thinks being a donor is ``not that big a deal. . . . I can function perfectly fine with one kidney.''

His modest demeanor is no surprise to his sister, Alexis Read, 22. ``He's got a hippie soul. He's smart; he's grounded. My parents did a good job.''

Pence is off dialysis, but must still undergo frequent blood and urine tests. He's also on immunosuppressants to keep his body from rejecting the kidney, and he must avoid infections from ''whatever's going around,'' Burke says.

As for Read, he has returned to school and he will live ''a normal, healthy life,'' said Chen, the surgeon.

Both families will continue to spend Thanksgiving together. Perhaps Read will decide on a major and Pence will become a federal law enforcement officer. But whatever happens, both are sure they will always be there for each other, connected by a gift given solely out of friendship.

Says Pence: 'I know he'll never call and say, `Hey, I gave you a kidney. Do this for me?' ''

http://www.miamiherald.com/299/story/659754.html